Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and all the cities of the South Mediterranean
seaboard, whilst it is unknown to the Nubians, the Berbers and the
wilder tribes dwelling inland. Proceeding Eastward we reach Egypt, that
classical region of all abominations which, marvellous to relate,
flourished in closest contact with men leading the purest of lives,
models of moderation and morality, of religion and virtue. Amongst the
ancient Copts Le Vice was part and portion of the Ritual and was
represented by two male partridges alternately copulating (Interp. in
Priapi Carm. xvii). The evil would have gained strength by the invasion
of Cambyses (B.C. 524), whose armies, after the victory over
Psammenitus, settled in the Nile-Valley, and held it, despite sundry
revolts, for some hundred and ninety years. During these six generations
the Iranians left their mark upon Lower Egypt and especially, as the
late Rogers Bey proved, upon the Fayyum the most ancient Delta of the
Nile.[386] Nor would the evil be diminished by the Hellenes who, under
Alexander the Great, “liberator and saviour of Egypt” (B.C. 332),
extinguished the native dynasties: the love of the Macedonian for Bagoas
the Eunuch being a matter of history. From that time and under the rule
of the Ptolemies the morality gradually decayed; the Canopic orgies
extended into private life and the debauchery of the men was equalled
only by the depravity of the women. Neither Christianity nor Al-Islam
could effect a change for the better; and social morality seems to have
been at its worst during the past century when Sonnini travelled (A.D.
1717). The French officer, who is thoroughly trustworthy, draws the
darkest picture of the widely-spread criminality, especially of the
bestiality and the sodomy (chapt. xv.) which formed the “delight of the
Egyptians.” During the Napoleonic conquest Jaubert in his letter to
General Bruix (p. 19) says, “Les Arabes et les Mamelouks ont traité
quelques-uns de nos prisonniers comme Socrate traitait, dit-on,
Alcibiade. Il fallait périr ou y passer.” Old Anglo-Egyptians still
chuckle over the tale of Sa’id Pasha and M. de Ruyssenaer, the
high-dried and highly respectable Consul-General for the Netherlands,
who was solemnly advised to make the experiment, active and passive,
before offering his opinion upon the subject. In the present age
extensive intercourse with Europeans has produced not a reformation but
a certain reticence amongst the upper classes: they are as vicious as
ever, but they do not care for displaying their vices to the eyes of
mocking strangers.
Syria and Palestine, another ancient focus of abominations, borrowed
from Egypt and exaggerated the worship of Androgynic and hermaphroditic
deities. Plutarch (De Iside) notes that the old Nilotes held the moon to
be of “male-female sex,” the men sacrificing to Luna and the women to
Lunus.[387] Isis also was a hermaphrodite, the idea being that Æther or
Air (the lower heavens) was the menstruum of generative nature; and
Damascius explained the tenet by the all-fruitful and prolific powers of
the atmosphere. Hence the fragment attributed to Orpheus, the song of
Jupiter (Air)—
All things from Jove descend
Jove was a male, Jove was a deathless bride;
For men call Air, of two-fold sex, the Jove.
Julius Firmicus relates that “The Assyrians and part of the Africans”
(along the Mediterranean seaboard?) “hold Air to be the chief element
and adore its fanciful figure (imaginata figura), consecrated under the
name of Juno or the Virgin Venus. * * * Their companies of priests
cannot duly serve her unless they effeminate their faces, smooth their
skins and disgrace their masculine sex by feminine ornaments. You may
see men in their very temples amid general groans enduring miserable
dalliance and becoming passives like women (viros muliebria pati) and
they expose, with boasting and ostentation, the pollution of the impure
and immodest body.” Here we find the religious significance of eunuchry.
It was practised as a religious rite by the Tympanotribas or
Gallus,[388] the castrated votary of Rhea or Bona Mater, in Phrygia
called Cybele, self-mutilated but _not_ in memory of Atys; and by a host
of other creeds: even Christianity, as sundry texts show,[389] could not
altogether cast out the old possession. Here too we have an explanation
of Sotadic love in its second stage, when it became, like cannibalism, a
matter of superstition. Assuming a nature-implanted tendency, we see
that like human sacrifice it was held to be the most acceptable offering
to the God-goddess in the Orgia or sacred ceremonies, a something set
apart for peculiar worship. Hence in Rome as in Egypt the temples of
Isis (Inachidos limina, Isiacæ sacraria Lunæ) were centres of sodomy and
the religious practice was adopted by the grand priestly castes from
Mesopotamia to Mexico and Peru.
We find the earliest written notices of the Vice in the mythical
destruction of the Pentapolis (Gen. xix.), Sodom, Gomorrah (= ’Ámirah,
the cultivated country), Adama, Zeboïm and Zoar or Bela. The legend has
been amply embroidered by the Rabbis who make the Sodomites do
everything _à l’envers_: _e.g._ if a man were wounded he was fined for
bloodshed and was compelled to fee the offender; and if one cut off the
ear of a neighbour’s ass he was condemned to keep the animal till the
ear grew again. The Jewish doctors declare the people to have been a
race of sharpers with rogues for magistrates, and thus they justify the
judgment which they read literally. But the traveller cannot accept it.
I have carefully examined the lands at the North and at the South of
that most beautiful lake, the so-called Dead Sea, whose tranquil
loveliness, backed by the grand plateau of Moab, is an object of
admiration to all save patients suffering from the strange disease “Holy
Land on the Brain.”[390] But I found no traces of craters in the
neighbourhood, no signs of vulcanism, no remains of “meteoric stones”:
the asphalt which named the water is a mineralised vegetable washed out
of the limestones, and the sulphur and salt are brought down by the
Jordan into a lake without issue. I must therefore look upon the history
as a myth which may have served a double purpose. The first would be to
deter the Jew from the Malthusian practices of his pagan predecessors,
upon whom obloquy was thus cast, so far resembling the scandalous and
absurd legend which explained the names of the children of Lot by Pheiné
and Thamma as “Moab” (Mu-ab) the water or semen of the father, and
“Ammon” as mother’s son, that is, bastard. The fable would also account
for the abnormal fissure containing the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea,
which the late Sir R. I. Murchison used wrong-headedly to call a
“Volcano of Depression”: this geological feature, that cuts off the
river-basin from its natural outlet the Gulf of Eloth (Akabah), must
date from myriads of years before there were “Cities of the Plains.” But
the main object of the ancient lawgiver, Osarsiph, Moses or the Moseidæ,
was doubtless to discountenance a perversion prejudicial to the increase
of population. And he speaks with no uncertain voice, Whoso lieth with a
beast shall surely be put to death (Exod. xxii. 19): If a man lie with
mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an
abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be
upon them (Levit. xx. 13; where v.v. 15–16 threaten with death man and
woman who lie with beasts). Again, There shall be no whore of the
daughters of Israel nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel (Deut. xxii.
5).
The old commentators on the Sodom-myth are most unsatisfactory _e.g._
Parkhurst, _s.v._ Kadesh. “From hence we may observe the peculiar
propriety of this punishment of Sodom and of the neighbouring cities. By
their sodomitical impurities they meant to acknowledge the Heavens as
the cause of fruitfulness independently upon, and in opposition to
Jehovah[391]; therefore Jehovah, by raining upon them not genial showers
but brimstone from heaven, not only destroyed the inhabitants, but also
changed all that country, which was before as the garden of God, into
brimstone and salt that is not sown nor beareth, neither any grass
groweth therein.” It must be owned that to this Pentapolis was dealt
very hard measure for religiously and diligently practising a popular
rite which a host of cities even in the present day, as Naples and
Shiraz, to mention no others, affect for simple luxury and affect with
impunity. The myth may probably reduce itself to very small proportions,
a few Fellah villages destroyed by a storm, like that which drove
Brennus from Delphi.
The Hebrews entering Syria found it religionised by Assyria and
Babylonia, whence Accadian Ishtar had passed west and had become
Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth or Ashirah,[392] the Anaitis of Armenia, the
Phœnician Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-goddess,[393]
who is queen of Heaven and Love. In another phase she was Venus Mylitta
= the Procreatrix, in Chaldaic Mauludatá and in Arabic Moawallidah, she
who bringeth forth. She was worshipped by men habited as women and vice
versâ; for which reason in the Torah (Deut. xx. 5) the sexes are
forbidden to change dress. The male prostitutes were called Kadesh the
holy, the women being Kadeshah, and doubtless gave themselves up to
great excesses. Eusebius (De bit. Const. iii. c. 55) describes a school
of impurity at Aphac, where women and “men who were not men” practised
all manner of abominations in honour of the Demon (Venus). Here the
Phrygian symbolism of Kybele and Attis (Atys) had become the Syrian
Ba’al Tammuz and Astarte, and the Grecian Dionæa and Adonis, the
anthropomorphic forms of the two greater lights. The site, Apheca, now
Wady al-Afik on the route from Bayrut to the Cedars, is a glen of wild
and wondrous beauty, fitting frame-work for the loves of goddess and
demigod: and the ruins of the temple destroyed by Constantine contrast
with Nature’s work, the glorious fountain, splendidior vitro, which
feeds the River Ibrahim and still at times Adonis runs purple to the
sea.[394]
The Phœnicians spread this androgynic worship over Greece. We find the
consecrated servants and votaries of Corinthian Aphrodite called
Hierodouli (Strabo viii. 6), who aided the ten thousand courtesans in
gracing the Venus-temple: from this excessive luxury arose the proverb
popularised by Horace. One of the head-quarters of the cult was Cyprus
where, as Servius relates (Ad Æn. ii. 632), stood the simulacre of a
bearded Aphrodite with feminine body and costume, sceptered and mitred
like a man. The sexes when worshipping it exchanged habits and here the
virginity was offered in sacrifice: Herodotus (i. c. 199) describes this
defloration at Babylon but sees only the shameful part of the custom
which was a mere consecration of a tribal rite. Everywhere girls before
marriage belong either to the father or to the clan and thus the maiden
paid the debt due to the public before becoming private property as a
wife. The same usage prevailed in ancient Armenia and in parts of
Ethiopia; and Herodotus tells us that a practice very much like the
Babylonian “is found also in certain parts of the Island of Cyprus:” it
is noticed by Justin (xviii. c. 5) and probably it explains the “Succoth
Benoth” or Damsels’ booths which the Babylonians transplanted to the
cities of Samaria.[395] The Jews seem very successfully to have copied
the abominations of their pagan neighbours, even in the matter of the
“dog.”[396] In the reign of wicked Rehoboam (B.C. 975) “There were also
sodomites in the land and they did according to all the abominations of
the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel” (1
Kings xiv. 20). The scandal was abated by zealous King Asa (B.C. 958)
whose grandmother[397] was high-priestess of Priapus (princeps in sacris
Priapi): he “took away the sodomites out of the land” (1 Kings xv. 12).
Yet the prophets were loud in their complaints, especially the so-called
Isaiah (B.C. 760), “except the Lord of Hosts had left to us a very small
remnant, we should have been as Sodom” (i. 9); and strong measures were
required from good King Josiah (B.C. 641) who amongst other things,
“brake down the houses of the sodomites that were by the house of the
Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove” (2 Kings xxiii. 7).
The bordels of boys (pueris alienis adhæseverunt) appear to have been
near the Temple.
Syria has not forgotten her old “praxis.” At Damascus I found some
noteworthy cases amongst the religious of the great Amawi Mosque. As for
the Druses we have Burckhardt’s authority (Travels in Syria, etc., p.
202) “unnatural propensities are very common amongst them.”
The Sotadic Zone covers the whole of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia now
occupied by the “unspeakable Turk,” a race of born pederasts; and in the
former region we first notice a peculiarity of the feminine figure, the
mammæ inclinatæ, jacentes et pannosæ, which prevails over all this part
of the belt. Whilst the women to the North and South have, with local
exceptions, the mammæ stantes of the European virgin,[398] those of
Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and Kashmir lose all the fine curves of the
bosom, sometimes even before the first child; and after it the
hemispheres take the form of bags. This cannot result from climate only;
the women of Marathá-land, inhabiting a damper and hotter region than
Kashmir, are noted for fine firm breasts even after parturition. Le Vice
of course prevails more in the cities and towns of Asiatic Turkey than
in the villages; yet even these are infected; while the nomad Turcomans
contrast badly in this point with the Gypsies, those Badawin of India.
The Kurd population is of Iranian origin, which means that the evil is
deeply rooted: I have noted in The Nights that the great and glorious
Saladin was a habitual pederast. The Armenians, as their national
character is, will prostitute themselves for gain but prefer women to
boys: Georgia supplied Turkey with catamites whilst Circassia sent
concubines. In Mesopotamia the barbarous invader has almost obliterated
the ancient civilisation which is ante-dated only by the Nilotic: the
mysteries of old Babylon nowhere survive save in certain obscure tribes
like the Mandæans, the Devil-worshippers and the Alí-iláhi. Entering
Persia we find the reverse of Armenia; and, despite Herodotus, I believe
that Iran borrowed her pathologic love from the peoples of the
Tigris-Euphrates Valley and not from the then insignificant Greeks. But
whatever may be its origin, the corruption is now bred in the bone. It
begins in boyhood and many Persians account for it by paternal severity.
Youths arrived at puberty find none of the facilities with which Europe
supplies fornication. Onanism[399] is to a certain extent discouraged by
circumcision, and meddling with the father’s slave-girls and concubines
would be risking cruel punishment if not death. Hence they use each
other by turns, a “puerile practice” known as Alish-Takish, the Lat.
facere vicibus or mutuum facere. Temperament, media, and atavism
recommend the custom to the general; and after marrying and begetting
heirs, Paterfamilias returns to the Ganymede. Hence all the odes of
Hafiz are addressed to youths, as proved by such Arabic exclamations as
’Afáka ’llah = Allah assain thee (masculine)[400]: the object is often
fanciful but it would be held coarse and immodest to address an
imaginary girl.[401] An illustration of the penchant is told at Shiraz
concerning a certain Mujtahid, the head of the Shi’ah creed,
corresponding with a prince-archbishop in Europe. A friend once said to
him, “There is a question I would fain address to your Eminence but I
lack the daring to do so.” “Ask and fear not,” replied the Divine. “It
is this, O Mujtahid! Figure thee in a garden of roses and hyacinths with
the evening breeze waving the cypress-heads, a fair youth of twenty
sitting by thy side and the assurance of perfect privacy. What, prithee,
would be the result?” The holy man bowed the chin of doubt upon the
collar of meditation; and, too honest to lie, presently whispered,
“Allah defend me from such temptation of Satan!” Yet even in Persia men
have not been wanting who have done their utmost to uproot the Vice: in
the same Shiraz they speak of a father who, finding his son in flagrant
delict, put him to death like Brutus or Lynch of Galway. Such isolated
cases, however, can effect nothing. Chardin tells us that houses of male
prostitution were common in Persia whilst those of women were unknown:
the same is the case in the present day and the boys are prepared with
extreme care by diet, baths, depilation, unguents and a host of artists
in cosmetics.[402] Le Vice is looked upon at most as a peccadillo and
its mention crops up in every jest-book. When the Isfahan man mocked
Shaykh Sa’adi by comparing the bald pates of Shirazian elders to the
bottom of a lotá, a brass cup with a wide-necked opening used in the
Hammam, the witty poet turned its aperture upwards and thereto likened
the well-abused podex of an Isfahani youth. Another favourite piece of
Shirazian “chaff” is to declare that when an Isfahan father would set up
his son in business he provides him with a pound of rice, meaning that
he can sell the result as compost for the kitchen-garden, and with the
price buy another meal: hence the saying Khakh-i-pái káhú = the soil at
the lettuce-root. The Isfahanis retort with the name of a station or
halting-place between the two cities where, under pretence of making
travellers stow away their riding-gear, many a Shirázi had been raped:
hence “Zín o takaltú tú bi-bar” = carry within saddle and saddle-cloth!
A favourite Persian punishment for strangers caught in the Harem or
Gynæceum is to strip and throw them and expose them to the embraces of
the grooms and negro-slaves. I once asked a Shirazi how penetration was
possible if the patient resisted with all the force of the sphincter
muscle: he smiled and said, “Ah, we Persians know a trick to get over
that; we apply a sharpened tent-peg to the crupper-bone (os coccygis)
and knock till he opens.” A well-known missionary to the East during the
last generation was subjected to this gross insult by one of the Persian
Prince-governors, whom he had infuriated by his conversion-mania: in his
memoirs he alludes to it by mentioning his “dishonoured person;” but
English readers cannot comprehend the full significance of the
confession. About the same time Shaykh Nasr, Governor of Bushire, a man
famed for facetious blackguardism, used to invite European youngsters
serving in the Bombay Marine and ply them with liquor till they were
insensible. Next morning the middies mostly complained that the
champagne had caused a curious irritation and soreness in la
parte-poste. The same Eastern “Scrogin” would ask his guests if they had
ever seen a man-cannon (Ádami-top); and, on their replying in the
negative, a grey-beard slave was dragged in blaspheming and struggling
with all his strength. He was presently placed on all fours and firmly
held by the extremities; his bag-trousers were let down and a dozen
peppercorns were inserted ano suo: the target was a sheet of paper held
at a reasonable distance; the match was applied by a pinch of cayenne in
the nostrils; the sneeze started the grapeshot and the number of hits on
the butt decided the bets. We can hardly wonder at the loose conduct of
Persian women perpetually mortified by marital pederasty. During the
unhappy campaign of 1856–57 in which, with the exception of a few
brilliant skirmishes, we gained no glory, Sir James Outram and the
Bombay army showing how badly they could work, there was a formal
outburst of the Harems; and even women of princely birth could not be
kept out of the officers’ quarters.
The cities of Afghanistan and Sind are thoroughly saturated with Persian
vice, and the people sing
Kadr-i-kus Aughán dánad, kadr-i-kunrá Kábuli:
The worth of coynte the Afghan knows: Cabul prefers the other
_chose_![403]
The Afghans are commercial travellers on a large scale and each caravan
is accompanied by a number of boys and lads almost in woman’s attire
with kohl’d eyes and rouged cheeks, long tresses and henna’d fingers and
toes, riding luxuriously in Kajáwas or camel-panniers: they are called
Kúch-i safari, or travelling wives, and the husbands trudge patiently by
their sides. In Afghanistan also a frantic debauchery broke out amongst
the women when they found incubi who were not pederasts; and the scandal
was not the most insignificant cause of the general rising at Cabul
(Nov. 1841), and the slaughter of Macnaghten, Burnes and other British
officers.
Resuming our way Eastward we find the Sikhs and the Moslems of the
Panjab much addicted to Le Vice, although the Himalayan tribes to the
north and those lying south, the Rájputs and Marathás, ignore it. The
same may be said of the Kashmirians who add another Kappa to the tria
Kakista, Kappadocians, Kretans, and Kilicians: the proverb says,
Agar kaht-i-mardum uftad, az ín sih jins kam gírí;
Eki Afghán, dovvum Sindí,[404] siyyum badjins-i-Kashmírí:
Though of men there be famine yet shun these three—
Afghan, Sindi and rascally Kashmírí.
M. Louis Daville describes the infamies of Lahore and Lakhnau where he
found men dressed as women, with flowing locks under crowns of flowers,
imitating the feminine walk and gestures, voice and fashion of speech,
and ogling their admirers with all the coquetry of bayadères. Victor
Jacquemont’s Journal de Voyage describes the pederasty of Ranjít Singh,
the “Lion of the Panjáb,” and his pathic Guláb Singh whom the English
inflicted upon Cashmir as ruler by way of paying for his treason. Yet
the Hindus, I repeat, hold pederasty in abhorrence and are as much
scandalised by being called Gánd-márá (anus-beater) or Gándú (anuser) as
Englishmen would be. During the years 1843–44 my regiment, almost all
Hindu Sepoys of the Bombay Presidency, was stationed at a purgatory
called Bandar Ghárrá,[405] a sandy flat with a scatter of
verdigris-green milk-bush some forty miles north of Karáchi the
head-quarters. The dirty heap of mud-and-mat hovels, which represented
the adjacent native village, could not supply a single woman; yet only
one case of pederasty came to light and that after a tragical fashion
some years afterwards. A young Brahman had connection with a soldier
comrade of low caste and this had continued till, in an unhappy hour,
the Pariah patient ventured to become the agent. The latter, in Arab.
Al-Fá’il = the “doer,” is not an object of contempt like Al-Mafúl = the
“done”; and the high-caste sepoy, stung by remorse and revenge, loaded
his musket and deliberately shot his paramour. He was hanged by court
martial at Hyderabad and, when his last wishes were asked he begged in
vain to be suspended by the feet; the idea being that his soul, polluted
by exiting “below the waist,” would be doomed to endless transmigrations
through the lowest forms of life.